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Tom Butterwith
Tom Butterwith

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Do you consider the environmental impact of your software?

When writing or deploying software, do you consider the environmental impact of it? Does this factor into the design process when choosing hosting etc?

I've been thinking about this more and more lately as cloud computing environments have started posting their emissions statistics. For example Google are 100% carbon neutral, AWS is 50% neutral with a promise to go 100%, and Microsoft are doubling down on sustainability

Top comments (2)

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niorad profile image
Antonio Radovcic

For DevLids.com I did a CO2-Offset after the first year. From some CO2-Footprint-Calculators I estimated 5.000 kg of CO2. (I don't have many visitors 😂). A good place for offsetting your footprint is atmosfair.de.

Other than that of course of course I mind performance while developing. Why would I not.

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DrBearhands

Jorge made some good points, but it's even worse:

Google matches 100% of the energy consumed by our global operations with renewable energy

So they aren't carbon neutral, they get their electricity requirements from "renewable" sources, this is very different.

Straight off the bat we have to ask if biomass, i.e. non-sustainable deforestation, is still considered renewable.
However, even sources that we traditionally consider renewable are bad for the environment. There are several sources discussing this, take a look at the talk "why renewables can't save the planet".

If a company would advertise having built a nuclear reactor next to their server farm, I would be inclined to make the switch. As it is, this is just marketing.

I wouldn't be surprised if in 10-20 years time we discovered renewables were a scam by big oil to keep nuclear at bay.